


Simple Creatures

by spibsy (lucy_and_ramona)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Piercings, Potentially Unsanitary Piercing Practices, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucy_and_ramona/pseuds/spibsy
Summary: The thing about Richie Tozier is that he is very, very good at having stupid ideas and then getting other people to go along with them.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 77





	Simple Creatures

**Author's Note:**

> Someday I'll write a fic for this fandom that doesn't have the tag 'potentially unsanitary piercing practices.' Today is not that day.

This whole thing started, as most things do in their friend group, because Richie is an idiot.

Okay, maybe that’s not the crux of the issue. This whole thing started because Richie is a _spontaneous_ idiot, specifically. Eddie’s known him for a long time now, and Richie’s never been able to leave an idea alone once he gets it in his head.

It’s not exactly a surprise when Richie drops down the clubhouse ladder in one leap, nearly spraining his ankle in the process. Eddie opens his mouth to chastise him, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“I’m gonna pierce my nose,” Richie announces like a grand proclamation to the masses. None of the others even look up, apart from Stan, who looks up explicitly to roll his eyes, then returns to the game of chess he’s playing with Ben.

“The fuck you are,” Eddie says. 

“How hard can it be? Big needle, push it through, I look cool as hell. I’m not seeing any downsides,” says Richie, shoving Eddie’s legs over so that he can pile into the hammock.

“Fucking sepsis, dickhead,” Eddie responds. He pushes at Richie’s ribs with his toes, digging them in so it’ll pinch. “You’re gonna get gangrene on your fucking face. And don’t think I’ll come to see you in the hospital if you get some kind of blood infection. You’re on your own.”

“Bill would come to see me even if I had gangrene, wouldn’t you, Bill?” Richie whines. He tips his head backward to look at Bill upside down, and his glasses tumble off into the dirt. Mike picks them up, shaking his head as he hands them back. Richie beams at him.

“C-course,” Bill says. He’s not really paying attention, though, leaning over Stan’s shoulder to give him advice. Bill’s a shit chess player, and Bev, muttering cheats in Ben’s ear on the other side of the table, is a much more competent coach. Stan, head tilted toward where Bill is murmuring in his ear, doesn’t appear to care. “Sure thing, R-Rich.”

“Thank you, Billiam,” says Richie. He turns back to Eddie with eyebrows raised in challenge.

“He wasn’t even listening to you,” Eddie argues, tucking his socked foot up into the side of Richie’s shirt. “If he was, he would tell you that you’re an idiot who’s going to die of some completely avoidable bloodborne pathogen.”

“But I’ll look sick as fuck when I do,” says Richie, grinning at Eddie like he thinks charm is enough to convince Eddie to let him pierce his nose with, probably, a fucking rusty hypodermic he finds in an alley.

“Yeah, sick as fuck is right.” Eddie swats at Richie’s foot where he’s slowly trying to fit his entire big toe into Eddie’s bellybutton. “Saint Peter at the pearly gates isn’t going to care what you look like when you’re trying to con him into letting you into heaven.”

“Well, when I do a killer kickflip off a cloud and flash my very cool nose piercing at him, maybe he’ll do me a solid and let me sneak in the backdoor.” Richie stretches and almost topples off the hammock. 

Eddie huffs at him, but temporarily loses the power of speech because Richie’s shirt is doing that thing where it lifts just enough to reveal a sliver of hip bone. He has to clear his throat twice before he can talk again, and by that time, Richie’s grinning at him again, delighted and quietly self-satisfied. “What are you going to do it with?”

“Found a safety pin in the bottom of my ma’s sewing kit,” Richie tosses out easily, rolling off the hammock like he hasn’t given Eddie a coronary embolism.

“I fucking knew it,” Eddie calls after him. “If you pierce your own nose, I’ll never speak to you again!”

“Then you gotta do it for me!” Richie calls back. He settles in a crouch on the Stan-and-Bill side of the chess table. “Come on, Stan the Man, Miss Marsh is cheating like a sailor on shore leave. You gotta sink down to their level to beat them.”

“Why, I never!” Bev exclaims, holding a hand to her chest with an expression of outrage. Her other hand, conspicuously, remains below the table line.

“You’ve got at least two pawns in your grubby little paw, you cunning minx,” says Richie, rolling up his sleeves. “And two can play at that game!”

Eddie sighs, scrabbling off the hammock himself to even the odds. He forgets about the conversation about piercings almost as soon as they’re finished having it, caught up in the rush of making chess a team-sport.

Surprisingly, Richie doesn’t bring it up again right away, or even the next day. Instead, he waits until Eddie’s guard is down. He waits until Eddie is distracted, trying to finish a crossword puzzle in the privacy of his own bedroom, then says, “Remember when you told me you’d pierce my nose?”

“ _What_ the _fuck_?” Eddie exclaims, upending the puzzle book and nearly stabbing himself with his pencil. He checks to make sure he hasn’t (lead poisoning sounds like a terrible way to die) and then scowls at his bedroom window where Richie is hanging perilously. “Where did you even – what do you want?”

“To hang out with my best bud, of course!” Richie wriggles the rest of his too-long limbs into the window. 

“Ever heard of knocking, dickhead?” Eddie asks. All the air in his lungs evaporates when there is a tip-tap knock at his door.

“Eddie-bear?” his mother’s voice comes from the hallway. “Everything alright? I thought I heard you shout.”

“Everything’s fine, Mommy,” Eddie replies, scowling at Richie. Surprisingly, though Richie is holding himself very still, and mimes zipping his lips. “I just dropped something on the floor!”

There’s a pause, and Eddie prepares to dive for his blinds to try and lower them to cover Richie.

“If you’re sure, dear,” his mother says. Eddie doesn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief just yet. “Make sure you don’t go crawling around on the floor, though. I haven’t vacuumed under your bed since yesterday.”

“I won’t, I promise!” replies Eddie. He doesn’t say anything else until he hears her slippers padding back down the hall.

“Oh yeah,” Richie says in a sarcastic whisper. “Why didn’t I just knock? Your mom seems like she would be thrilled to have me over.”

“Maybe if you would wash your hair once in a while,” Eddie hisses. He beckons Richie in, regardless, and Richie very carefully sets his feet down on the floor. 

“My hair dries out if I wash it every day,” whines Richie, tiptoeing his way to Eddie’s bed and hopping up onto it. “It gets frizzy. You want me to have frizzy hair, Eds?”

“I want you to stop calling me that.” It’s halfhearted at best. Eddie gave up on Richie calling him anything else a long time ago. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“I told you,” Richie says, leaning back to rest on his elbows. He laces his fingers over his stomach and gives Eddie a winning grin. “Remember? When you said you’d pierce my nose for me?”

Eddie makes himself take a deep breath. He lets it out slowly. “I did no such thing,” he says.

“You said I couldn’t do it, or you wouldn’t be my friend anymore,” says Richie in what would seem like a very reasonable tone if it was coming out of anyone else. “That’s a risk I’m not willing to take, my dear Spaghetti.”

“Then don’t pierce your fucking nose,” Eddie suggests. 

“Not an option,” Richie immediately replies. “Either you’re piercing my nose for me, or I’m gonna get Bev to do it. She’s got the next steadiest hands after you.”

“Mike has the next steadiest hands; you just know he would never agree to do this,” Eddie grumbles. He heaves another sigh. “You know, you could just do it yourself and let me never speak to you again.”

Richie grins at him like he knows he’s won. “I could never, Eds. I’d die first,” he says. There’s an edge of too-much-sincerity in his voice that has been giving Eddie cramps in his aortic valves for as long as he can remember.

“You’re probably going to die from an infection, anyway, doing it yourself.” Eddie sighs. Richie’s grin widens, clearly sensing his impending victory. “We can’t do it here. My mom will call the police.”

“My parents are both at work tomorrow,” Richie offers. “You could come over. Mom just cleaned the bathroom.”

“We’ll just see about that,” says Eddie. He huffs, smooths the pages of his crossword book, and says, “Who’s the lead singer of The Cure?”

“Robert Smith.” Richie heaves a beleaguered sigh and holds a hand to his heart. “Have I taught you nothing, young grasshopper?”

“You’ve taught me to never underestimate your ability to be insufferable.” Eddie tries very hard to force the smile from the corners of his mouth. From the way Richie beams at him, he doesn’t think he’s very successful.

Any hope Eddie had of Richie forgetting about their not-even-agreement evaporated before it even really solidified. He shows up to Eddie’s bedroom window again at noon the next day, grinning, leaning against the windowsill with sparkling eyes.

Eddie sighs. “What am I telling my mom?”

“I called Bill; he said to say you’re staying over at his house. If she calls, he’ll cover for you.” Richie’s grin widens. “This is foolproof, Eds, my dear.”

“Nothing with you involved could ever be foolproof.” Eddie sighs, slipping off of his bed to pack an overnight bag. Richie, lounging, watches.

“I washed my safety pin,” he says, unprompted.

Eddie snorts. “I’m not gonna use a safety pin,” he says. “There’s no way you properly disinfected it, and besides, that needle’s too small. If you’re going to insist on doing this, I’m going to do it as close to the right way as I can.”

“Oh?” Richie leans closer, curious.

Eddie can feel his cheeks gaining faint color. The ambient temperature in the room must have increased. “I took a sewing needle from my mom,” he admits. “It’s still not ideal, but it’s the best I can do without being licensed and having access to that kind of equipment.”

“You sure do know a lot about this,” Richie says. It’s not even a question, but it still makes Eddie feel defensive.

“After you threatened to do it yourself, I went to the library,” he says. He’s focusing very intently on packing clothes to sleep in. “There were some very informative books there about piercing practices. You really should get this done by a professional, you know.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I have that kind of money to blow,” Richie scoffs. “Besides. I want you to do it.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Why? Because you know I’m squeamish?”

“No.” Richie’s voice has that tone again. That genuineness that makes Eddie’s stomach lurch pleasantly. “Because I mostly want to do everything with you anyway.”

Eddie drops his allergy medication on the floor. He busies himself with picking it up, making sure that the cap is on correctly and then double-checking just to make sure. 

He clears his throat, then puts the bottle of pills into his duffle bag. “I need to get my toothbrush,” he says, and he leaves without looking at Richie again.

Eddie shouts down the stairs that he’s going to sleep over at Bill’s house, reassuring his mother that he’ll call so that she knows he got there safe and that he won’t eat or drink any dairy while he’s there. Her grudging approval is enough for him to grab his toothbrush and dental floss from the bathroom, sealing both carefully into a plastic baggie.

Richie is still in his window when Eddie returns, though he doesn’t say anything while Eddie zips up the duffle bag.

“I’ll meet you outside,” Eddie says. He hefts the duffle onto his shoulder. “A couple houses down, just in case.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.” Richie tosses off a sloppy salute. He sounds normal again. Eddie must have been imagining whatever tenseness he’d felt when he came back into the room. Carefully, Richie backs out of the window, and Eddie closes it behind him.

Eddie tries to look as unsuspicious as possible as he descends the stairs, stopping to kiss his mother on the cheek and assure her again that the Denbroughs know that he’s allergic to tree nuts before he leaves the house, detouring to the garage for his bicycle.

As promised, Richie is waiting a few houses down, leaning against the Thompsons’ mailbox with his bike lying haphazardly at his feet. His hands are shoved into his pockets, something that Eddie would have thought impossible, considering the tightness of the jeans that Richie had taken to wearing halfway through high school.

Richie beams as Eddie approaches. “You made it,” he greets.

“I still think this is a stupid idea,” Eddie says in return, watching Richie set his bicycle right. “I don’t want to be held legally liable for your face falling off.”

“I promise not to sue you,” Richie offers. “I’ll even put it in writing. Stan can be our witness.”

“Shut up,” says Eddie. He swings his leg up and over the seat of his bike. “You said your parents are both going to be at work?”

“Until five,” Richie confirms. “Dad usually works late on Thursdays anyway, and Mom has Bridge tonight until seven-thirty. We are free and clear.”

They begin a slow pedal down the road, Eddie’s duffle thumping softly against his hip as he rides.

“You don’t think I’ll look a little cool?” Richie asks out of nowhere, making lazy zigzags beside Eddie.

“No,” Eddie says automatically, even as he pictures Richie as he is now, but with a nose ring. Richie has freckles on his nose, from getting too much sun in the early summer. Would it look so strange, a glint of silver peering from his nose? Would it be so odd? Unattractive?

Eddie knows, even if he tries so very hard not to think about it, that there isn’t much Richie does that Eddie doesn’t find enthralling. He’s had a lot of practice at keeping that under wraps, but it’s gotten difficult to keep being dishonest with himself in his own head. There’s something about Richie that has always made Eddie like things he really, really shouldn’t.

“Not even a little?” Richie wheedles. “Come on. Imagine me with a leather jacket, okay? And, like, boots.”

“No,” Eddie says again. He swallows hard. “Do you even have anything to put into this piercing? Or am I just sticking a needle in your nose for you?”

He can hear the grin in Richie’s voice when he answers. “I took one of my mom’s earrings. She won’t miss it; she’s got a billion of those little fake diamond studs.”

Eddie sighs. He feels this one in the very bottoms of his lungs.

“You’ll give yourself an asthma attack doing that, Eds,” says Richie cheerily. He even starts to whistle the closer they get to his house.

“You’re really looking forward to this, aren’t you?” Eddie asks, leaning forward on his bike so that he can make it up the little hill in Richie’s driveway. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Richie asks. He lets his bike drop in the backyard, one of the handlebars digging a divot into the grass. Eddie is only slightly more careful when he lowers his own to the ground. “I get to spend the whole day with one of my best buds, I’m gonna have a cool nose piercing, and you get some great hands-on experience.”

“I don’t need piercing experience,” Eddie snaps at him to cover up the minor choking fit he narrowly averted. “I’m not gonna become a professional piercer.”

“Maybe it’s your true calling,” Richie suggests, breezing through his back door. “And you don’t even know it. Like those people who have no idea they’re really good at math or some shit and then they invent the quadratic equation.”

“That’s not what’s going to happen,” says Eddie. He sets his duffle on one of the kitchen chairs. “Are we doing this or not?”

“Wow, no foreplay?” Richie asks. Eddie’s tonsils try to strangle themselves. “Come on, Eds, take a load off. You want a sandwich? I make a mean ham ‘n cheese if I do say so myself.”

“You know damn well that I’m sensitive to dairy,” Eddie says, but he sits in a chair anyway. Richie hardly listens to him on a good day, and Eddie’s hungry, regardless.

The sandwich that Richie deposits in front of him on squishy slices of white bread doesn’t have any cheese on it.

“Bon appetit!” Richie exclaims, layering his own sandwich with pickles, mustard, and peanut butter, for some ungodly reason.

“You’re disgusting,” Eddie informs him. 

Richie grins at him and takes a big bite of his creation, unperturbed when globs of mustard drip from the other end of the sandwich to the floor. “You gotta live a little sometimes, Eds,” he says, barely intelligible. “Live for the moment, that’s what you should be doing.”

“I don’t want to live for the moment,” Eddie says. He takes a far more demure bite out of his own sandwich, and nothing drips to the floor because he’s not a hooligan. “I want to live for all of the future moments that I get to have if I don’t live exclusively for whatever moment is happening right now.”

Richie snorts, taking another bite. “How boring.”

“The word you’re looking for is _safe_ ,” Eddie corrects.

“Mm, no, I don’t think it was. I think boring is what I meant.” 

Richie shoves the last half of his sandwich into his mouth all at once. Eddie prepares to exact a demonstration of his knowledge regarding the Heimlich maneuver. 

Somehow, miraculously, Richie does not begin choking to death. He does brush his hands off onto the floor, crumbs flying every which way without a care.

“Okay,” he announces, hopping onto the kitchen counter and spreading his arms. “Have at it, captain.”

“I’m not doing it _here_ ,” Eddie says, horrified. He’s still only two-thirds of the way done with his sandwich, anyway. “Wait,” he says, setting his sandwich down on the plate in front of him and leaning over to dig into the bag he’s brought. 

He carefully extracts the plastic bag with the needle in it. It’s almost beautiful, the way it glints in the lights of the kitchen. It’s shiny because he washed it with antibacterial soap, and he holds it out to Richie on the palm of his hand. “Boil this.”

“Boil it?” Richie asks. He takes the needle anyway, opening a cupboard to extract a pot, which he fills with water from the sink.

“That’ll disinfect it,” Eddie says. “And then I have alcohol that we can soak it in after.”

“If we’re gonna soak it in alcohol, why are we boiling it?” asks Richie.

“Because I’m not taking any chances, Richard,” Eddie says haughtily. He finishes his sandwich and takes the plate to the sink to begin washing it, since Richie has probably never washed a dish in his life.

He can sense Richie behind him, though he doesn’t step so close that he’s touching Eddie. Parts of Eddie, parts he tries his damnedest not to think about, wishes that Richie _was_ touching him. He wishes he could feel the length of Richie’s stupid long leg against his.

“I put some ice cubes in the fridge,” says Richie. He sounds, for the first time today, uncertain. “I thought, maybe – Charlie said that she pierced her friend’s ear with an ice cube. To numb it or something. I asked her in English.”

“That’s good,” Eddie acknowledges. “I didn’t know you still talked to her.”

“I don’t, really,” Richie admits. “But it didn’t end super bad. Not like with Jenny.”

Eddie shudders. “Please. I’m trying to focus here.”

“Sorry.” 

Richie only stays quiet for a moment. Eddie rolls his eyes as, exactly seventeen seconds after he apologized, Richie says, “Why do you need to focus to wash a plate, anyway?”

“To make sure I do it right,” Eddie replies. “You wouldn’t know, never having washed a dish in your life.”

“I have so, asshole!” Richie exclaims. He nudges Eddie’s shoulder with his elbow, and Eddie works not to breathe a sigh of relief. “I washed the dishes from dinner like three days ago!”

“What was it?” 

“… Takeout pizza,” Richie says sulkily. “But I washed the plates!”

“You did?”

“… Well, I washed most of them!” 

“That’s what I thought,” says Eddie, setting the second plate in the dish drainer and turning to check on the needle. 

He hadn’t realized that Richie was taking a step forward for some reason, maybe to grab Eddie’s shoulder, or to put the dishes away, something, but instead he just bumps into Eddie head-on, and he reaches out to grasp Eddie’s elbow so that he doesn’t fall, and his hand is fucking huge, his palm warm against Eddie’s forearm, and he’s very, very close to Eddie right now. Closer, almost, than he ever is.

Eddie clears his throat. “Sorry,” he says, though it was definitely Richie’s fault they’ve bumped into each other. He says it so that he’s said something, anything, and steps back and to the side.

“My fault,” says Richie. He clears his own throat, then hops back up onto the kitchen counter. He’s silent, finally, a feat, as Eddie sits at the kitchen table again.

“Which side do you want it in?” Eddie asks after it’s been too long with no sounds from Richie. “Left or right?”

“Right in the middle. Like Pinocchio.” Richie crosses his eyes at Eddie with a grin, pushing his fingertip against the tip of his nose.

“If you’re not careful, I’ll actually do it that way; then you’d be sorry.” Eddie sniffs.

“I think I want it on the right,” Richie muses as though he hasn’t heard Eddie at all. “Maybe someday I’ll do both sides. Really make my mother have kittens.”

“You can never tell her I was a part of this,” Eddie says. “She’ll never let me come over again.”

“Aw, wouldja miss me, Eds?” Richie asks. He’s still grinning. Eddie wants to flick him right in that smile line he gets along the side of his mouth. 

“I’d miss your mom’s cooking.” He tilts his chin up. “She makes really good cobbler.”

“That she does, my young friend.” Richie glances at the pot on the stove, hopping down to remove it from the heat. “What do we do with this now? It’s hot,” he states.

“Yes, very good,” Eddie says, squirming when Richie elbows him in the ribs. “Ouch! Fucking Christ, okay, let’s fish it out. Do you have tweezers?”

Richie frantically pats the pockets of his jeans and underneath his armpits. “Now where did I put those – I know I had some on me –”

Eddie sighs so hard that it gives him a bit of a headache between his eyes. “I think I have some in my glasses kit,” he mutters.

By the time he’s dug out his tweezers, disinfected them, fished out the needle, and gotten it into a cup with alcohol, Richie is practically vibrating at his side.

“Come on; let’s do it,” he urges. “That’s everything, right? I don’t even need ice cubes. I’m so excited my face is numb.”

“We’re using ice cubes,” Eddie insists. He puts some ice cubes from the freezer into the bag he’d had the needle in and thrusts it at Richie. “Put that against your nose,” he says.

“Right now?” Richie asks, but he does it anyway.

“I thought you wanted to do this now?” Eddie asks with raised eyebrows. 

“I mean, fucking definitely I do,” Richie responds. It’s muffled behind the bag. “I just thought we were never going to actually get to it.”

“Come on, dickhead,” says Eddie, beckoning Richie along. He grabs his bag on the way toward the stairs, slinging it over his shoulder. 

Richie’s bathroom is about as clean as Eddie could hope. He closes the toilet lid and sets his bag down on top of it, turning a critical eye to his best friend.

“Get in the tub,” he finally says, putting the cup with the needle in it on the sink.

Richie’s eyebrows shoot up. “ _In_ the tub?” he asks.

“Yes, in the tub,” Eddie huffs. “The shower is a cleaning machine, basically, so it’s the cleanest place in the house. I’m certainly not gonna do it on the floor.”

“You’re the boss,” says Richie. He’s still holding the bag to his face as he clambers over the side of the tub, slouching in the end without any knobs.

“How’s your nose?”

“Cold.”

“But not numb?” Eddie asks for clarification.

Richie pulls the bag away and wrinkles his nose. “No,” he confirms. “Just cold.”

“Okay, put it back on, then.”

Eddie opens his bag again. He’s not sure what else in it he could need, but he’s certainly not going to sit here staring at Richie for the next five or ten minutes. He’d rather die. He rummages in the bag for as long as he thinks he can get away with, then zips it again. When he turns back to face Richie, Richie’s looking back at him over the bag of ice.

“Thanks for doing this, Eds,” says Richie. Eddie thinks he might be smiling behind the bag. “You’re a real pal.”

“I’m just the only one stupid enough to still say yes to your plans,” says Eddie. He sighs. “Numb yet.”

Richie pulls the bag away and wriggles his head from side to side. “I think that’s as good as we’re gonna get,” he confirms. 

“Okay.” Eddie looks at Richie, then looks at the cup with the needle in it. He might not have thought this through. “Okay,” he repeats, and, steeling his shoulders, he washes his hands, then puts the cup on the edge of the tub. “Don’t laugh,” he warns, and then he delicately steps over the side of the tub between where Richie’s legs are splayed.

“Why would I – Oh,” says Richie, and then nothing else, as Eddie lowers himself to his knees and eyes Richie critically.

Eddie takes a deep breath. His knees already hurt a little. Tubs are hard. He retrieves the needle from the cup. “Take your glasses off and stay still,” he warns. “I don’t want to accidentally poke it too far in and get the needle stuck in your fucking brain or something.”

“Great, now I’m worried about that!” Richie exclaims. He flings his glasses off and drops them over the side of the tub with a clatter. Eddie can hear his foot tapping against the wall of the tub, too. “You’ve got a real great tubside manner, Ed!”

“Shut up! I gotta do it quick before your nose gets feeling back in it!” Eddie leans in closer, and Richie shuts up, his eyes big and almost luminous as Eddie lines up the needle. “Hold your breath,” Eddie says.

Richie doesn’t even nod, but Eddie knows he’s listened, can feel that Richie’s chest isn’t rising or falling. He tries so hard not to think about how close that makes them. His hand doesn’t shake as he settles his pinky on Richie’s cheek for balance. 

“Okay,” Eddie whispers, and then, holding the tip of Richie’s nose carefully, he pushes the needle forward in a smooth movement.

It doesn’t want to go in. It takes more effort than Eddie thought it was going to. But with a little more force, the skin of Richie’s nose gives, and the needle is through to the other side. Richie’s breath hitches, but that’s all. He’s still staring up at Eddie.

It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist for a long moment, just Eddie staring down at Richie’s stupid big moon eyes, watching blood well in the hole he’s just made in his best friend’s fucking face.

“… Oh, fuck, where’s the earring,” says Eddie with dawning horror. “Jesus fucking Christ, Richie, where is the earring?”

Richie’s fingers scramble at the front pocket of his uselessly tight pants until he can get inside and fish out the diamond stud he’d been talking about earlier. He holds it up to Eddie with shaking hands.

“Is your pocket sanitary, asshole?” Eddie snaps. He knows it’s not Richie’s fault; he should have asked for the earring before they got to this point, but he hadn’t and now here they are, and he gets sharp when he’s nervous, Richie knows this.

“Just dunk it in the cup,” Richie encourages. His voice sounds a little nasal, most likely because he’s got a big fucking needle hanging out of his nose, and Eddie doesn’t think; he just grabs the earring and throws it into the cup with the leftover alcohol in it. 

They both look at the cup. The earring looks a bit sad, down at the bottom, and Eddie dips his fingers into the alcohol to remove it. “All right,” he says, more to calm himself than anything. “You okay?”

“Stings a little,” says Richie cheerfully. He shrugs his shoulders. “Could be worse.”

“At least there’s that.” Eddie rolls his own shoulders. “Okay, I’m going to put the earring in now.”

He goes slower this time, sliding the needle back out (he’s amazed he hasn’t fainted) and sliding the post of the earring into the hole. There’s a slow trail of blood dripping from the side of Richie’s nose now, though he seems unconcerned about it. Finally, Eddie slides the backing of the earring onto the post – up Richie’s nose, which he’s trying not to think about too hard – and lets himself heave a sigh of relief.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” asks Richie, and Eddie can feel the way he releases a sigh of his own. He realizes, then, that in all the ruckus, he’s much closer to Richie than he had been before. He’d scrambled to grab the cup, and now he has one leg stretched out behind him and the other knee jammed under Richie’s, and they’re… very close now. 

“No,” says Eddie. He nearly swallows the word. Richie’s eyes are still very big, and the blood pooling dark alongside his nose makes his skin look paler than he is already. “It wasn’t _great_.”

“I thought it was pretty good.” Richie gives him a half smile, hesitant, and Eddie has a moment of realization that feels sluggish, a lightbulb dipped in molasses. Richie is going to kiss him.

He can feel it in a thousand tiny ways – Richie’s chest as he breathes in, Richie’s eyes nervously flitting down Eddie’s face, Richie’s knee pulling up so that he can lean forward – and he, well, he knows what he _wants_ , sort of, in the way that a fire wants fuel, the way a book wants a reader, inasmuch as it’s possible to want something that feels so inevitable. He can feel Richie’s breath on his mouth.

“Wait,” Eddie says. He almost can’t believe it’s him

“Okay,” says Richie, immediately leaning back, and there’s a grace to it, a way of conceding that is so unlike Richie, and that’s not what he—

“No, that’s not what I, just—” Without looking, Eddie scrabbles next to the tub for a roll of toilet paper, yanking two or three sheets off. He crumples them into a ball and brushes the drying blood from Richie’s face. It flakes and pills, but Richie stays very still and lets him do it. “Okay, go ahead,” Eddie says when he’s finished, throwing the ball in the vague direction of the wastebasket.

“You know I love it when you take charge,” Richie jokes, but there’s a softness to it that Eddie doesn’t recognize, and he’s still trying to figure it out when Richie leans up and kisses him.

Eddie’s been kissed before – twice – and neither time was really any good at all, but this is different. This is Richie. There’s a whole world inside that word for Eddie, and he closes his eyes and kisses back with a fierceness he didn’t even know he had in him.

It’s gentler than Eddie would have expected from Richie. Richie has a hand behind his head, even, and it’s not pushing or anything, just. It’s just there, his fingertips brushing through the wavy ends of Eddie’s hair. Richie starts smiling against Eddie’s mouth, and then Eddie’s smiling, too, and then he’s trying _not_ to smile because it’s hard to kiss someone and smile at the same time, and then Richie does this _thing_ with his hips where he rolls them a little and tugs Eddie against him with an arm around his waist at the same time, and Eddie doesn’t have to focus on anything anymore.

“Okay?” Richie asks, his hand tucking up the back of Eddie’s shirt, his fingertips drawing smooth lines up and down the groove of his spine.

“Ayuh,” says Eddie, unable to really think past a syllable or two.

“Good,” Richie replies, kissing the corner of Eddie’s mouth. It’s an unexpected sweetness from the boy who once won an action figure by eating more ants than Joey Brooks in the third grade. “Only my nose is really starting to hurt, and I don’t know how much longer I can do this before I start bleeding again.”

“Oh, Jesus, this is probably aggravating the piercing site so much,” says Eddie, pushing himself up so that he can inspect his work from the right angle. He tips Richie’s chin up, frowning as he looks to where the piercing is, indeed, bleeding again.

“Never really had someone glare at me like that after I kiss ‘em,” Richie says, though he’s smiling, blood dripping down one of his smile lines like a parenthesis. 

“I highly doubt that,” Eddie says, keeping his eyes on the piercing.

“You wound me, Eds,” Richie replies, holding a hand to his heart. “Right here, you wound me.”

“I’m sure you’ll get over it somehow,” says Eddie. He leans back, satisfied with his work. “I think it’ll heal straight,” he says. “Which is a minor miracle, considering.”

“Hey.”

Eddie looks down to where Richie has grabbed his wrist, his long fingers encircling it with ease. “What?” he asks.

Richie’s eyes are searching Eddie’s face for something, he’s not sure what, and he’s not sure how Richie’s going to find it without his glasses on. He must, though, because he relaxes again, giving Eddie another grin.

“How d’you think I’d look with a lip piercing?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he’s trying not to smile and Richie knows it. “Like a hooligan,” he replies. He nearly swallows his tongue when Richie’s hand slides down and he presses their palms together, cupping his hand around Eddie’s.

“Yeah,” says Richie. “You like it, though.”

Yeah, goddamn it, he does. “Shut up,” Eddie says. He doesn’t pull his hand away as he stands, staying stooped long enough that it starts to hurt his neck. “We should get some more ice for your nose. Keep the swelling down.”

Richie’s mouth twists, his eyes squinting into a leer. 

“Shut up,” Eddie says again, taking his hand back with a roll of his eyes.

“Why don’t you shut me up?” Richie asks. He reaches over the side of the tub and grabs his glasses, shoving them on and blinking at Eddie with feigned innocence.

“I’ve known you too long to believe that’ll ever happen.” Eddie washes his hands, slowly, pretending he doesn’t notice Richie standing up and stepping out of the tub. It’s hard to pretend, though, when Richie’s fingertips rest gently on his hips.

“Thanks again, Eds,” Richie says quietly. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me about six billion, but sure,” Eddie says. He shivers a little when Richie pushes a kiss into the back of his hair.

“Just let me know what piercing you want, I’d be more’n happy to—Ow!”

“You just have to ruin things, don’t you?” Eddie asks, removing his heel from Richie’s toes.

“Well, yeah, it’s my whole thing,” says Richie. He sneaks a kiss to Eddie’s cheek, and while Eddie is standing frozen in place, skips out of the bathroom and down the hallway toward his room. “I got the newest Spider-Man if you want to read it!” he calls back to Eddie.

Eddie sighs, then trudges down the hallway after him. 

Really, he thinks, life would get boring if Richie ever did what he expected him to. It’s better this way.

Much better.


End file.
